


The Only Lie Told is the Hardest Truth to Bear

by AnonEMouse



Series: When your heart is broken all you can do is break, too [3]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: All the Avengers are so depressed, Coulson's untimely end, M/M, Noooo, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-15
Updated: 2012-06-15
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEMouse/pseuds/AnonEMouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He only ever told one lie in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Lie Told is the Hardest Truth to Bear

**Author's Note:**

> Advance "not me being gross"-ing: The best stolen identities tend to come from recently deceased infants. That's a real thing, not something I said to be gross. I don't know why I know that.

The truth is this: Clint Barton does not love Phil Coulson.

//

“You never lie? Really?” Fury’s skepticism is plain.  
Coulson shrugs. “It’s not so hard.”  
“How?”  
“If I can’t tell the truth, I just don’t say anything at all.”

//

Clint Barton is young. Barely more than a boy. Not young enough to be Coulson’s son, but young enough that the difference is marked. It took far longer than Coulson expected to run the assassin down. The kid uses a _bow and arrow_ for the love of God. It’s not like he was keeping a particularly low profile. But even in a world of paranoiacs, Barton took evasive maneuvering to a whole new level. When Fury asked him to find the man that dropped one of their best assets, Coulson didn’t count on losing nearly six months to tracking what turned out to be practically a runaway teenager to a truck stop in bumfuck Pennsylvania. 

The kid’s edgy even now, sidling away slowly, looking for a clean exit, eyes flickering relentlessly around his environment. Coulson’s got him well and truly boxed in but the kid won’t go down without a fight. This one, this one won’t be caged. If he’s going to turn him, it won’t be with threats or force. What would a kid like Barton need? Want? Coulson looks at him, at the threadbare clothes, sneakers nearly worn through, the hollows in his face that speak to hunger and exhaustion. Only his weapons are in good repair, but his bow is old and shows signs of careful mending to keep it in top condition. 

A home. A kid like this needs a home. So Coulson offers him one.

//

“Why don’t you just scrub me out of the program, Coulson?” Barton’s tone is antagonistic.  
“You’re too talented to cut loose.” He barely spares the younger man a glance.  
“I punched Hitchins in the face.”  
“And you have such style, too.”

//

Fury gives him a long look when he requests to handle their new recruit himself. Coulson doesn’t technically have the seniority to handle assets, but it’s clear from the beginning that everything about Barton will be a special case, and Fury has a soft spot for the special ones. Coulson thinks Fury is responding to the potential he himself sees in Barton. He isn’t. Fury is responding to the potential in Coulson.

They are an incomparable team. For nine years, as Coulson rapidly ascends the ranks, Barton becomes the most deadly sniper they’ve got. He’s frequently on loan to other agencies, and if anyone is put off by his weapon of choice, they aren’t once the job is done. The road isn’t entirely smooth, though. The op in Belgrade goes pear-shaped and Barton has to put down the entire team when they’re compromised. He takes a sabbatical after that, which Coulson retroactively files when Barton simply doesn’t show up for duty in the aftermath. And then there’s Kharkiv, where, after tracking the Black Widow for thirteen months, Barton returns to base not with a confirmed kill but with an unconscious Natalia Romanova slung over his shoulder. After that, they’re frequently a team instead of a partnership and though Coulson cares for Natasha, there are times when he longs for the days when it was just him and Barton and an objective.

//

“Target acquired,” says Barton, lying on a roof. He’s been there for 80 hours and counting.  
“Acknowledged,” Coulson says, watching the security feeds. “Take the shot.”  
“Target eliminated.”  
“Acknowledged. Come on home, Hawkeye.”

//

Looking back, he’s not sure when he fell in love with Clint. Probably about the time he stopped calling him _Barton_ in his head and began thinking of him as _Clint_. All he knows is, one day he looked at Clint in the commissary and realized that he loved the one they called Hawkeye, and that he had done for a very long time. Maybe since the very beginning, when a scared, hungry kid was looking for a way out and he felt compelled to offer him a home, or maybe it was when he vouched for Natasha because of the look in Clint’s eyes, or maybe those were just things he did because he was already in love. Because maybe he’s loved Clint Barton ever since they found an asset with an arrow through his throat, which is fucked up, but what can you do? They aren’t regular people.

He’s pretty sure Barton and Romanov are fucking. He’s also pretty sure it isn’t love, not for either of them, but more what two lonely, stressed people who trust no one else do when they need an outlet for emotions they’ll never talk about. He does know that they keep safe houses together, and that they disappear for hours—days—sometimes. And then there’s Budapest. So Coulson goes his own way, too, and sees people when he can. He gets serious with Colleen, a cellist—an ironic twist no one but him can appreciate—but she gets an offer to be first chair in Portland and when she moves, he doesn’t follow. She was just a place holder anyway. 

//

“Coulson’s got a lady,” Natasha says, scanning the horizon with binoculars.  
“Maintain radio silence, Widow.” Coulson isn’t playing this game today.  
“She’s a Vassar girl, you should be proud. Hawkeye, shouldn’t he be proud?”  
“Radio silence, Agent.”

//

He has safe houses around the world, and even though it’s SOP to keep safe houses covert even from other agents, he knows that Fury, Clint and Natasha all know about his, just as he knows about theirs. Hill probably knows at least half of his, too. But there is one, in Ossining, that he knows is entirely off the books. He spent years building up the identity of Phil Campbell, paid a fortune for a valid social security number that didn’t come from a dead baby, and uses it to buy a little blue house with a white fence. He fills the house with the detritus of the life he wishes he could be living and isn’t. There are photos of him and Clint from all over the world, postcards on the fridge from places they have ops. He fills the closet with articles of clothing Clint leaves behind—he always forgets to pack something whenever they’re leaving—and he sleeps only on the left side of the bed, as if someone will be joining him on the right.

His neighbor, Mrs. Agostino, is an old woman in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. She forgets new information but can recall her childhood in the war clearly enough. She remembers to prune her roses and collect her mail, but Coulson has to reintroduce himself every time she says hello. She is why he bought this house. He shows her pictures of Clint when he gets back from a stint in Libya. He says, _This is my husband, his name is Clint_. Mrs. Agostino doesn’t judge—she can’t remember enough to be scandalized. She just smiles and says, What a handsome young man. Coulson tells her that Clint travels a lot for work, and so does he, so they’re rarely at home together. She clucks her tongue and mutters about fast-paced lives, but she listens to Coulson’s stories and smiles at how proud Phil is of Clint. And the next time they see one another, they start the whole routine over again. _This is my husband, his name is Clint_.

Coulson pretends a life he’ll never really have and makes it be enough.

//

“Happy twentieth, boss,” Barton says, dropping a Hostess cupcake on Coulson’s desk.  
“You missed that birthday by over thirty years, Barton.” Coulson knows exactly what this is and his heart pounds before he can control it.  
“I’m hurt, Coulson. Here I thought our anniversary meant everything to you.”  
“It means something, anyway.”

//

Coulson is dying and he is so _angry_. He thinks of all the people he could be angry with and isn’t—Loki for stabbing him, Fury for thinking they could ever contain Loki, Thor for bringing his family feud to Earth, the would-be Avengers for fighting each other instead of Loki, himself for going up against Loki alone. But he’s not mad at them. No, he’s mad at Clint for…well. Nothing and everything, he supposes.

But there’s peace here, too. Because it’s over, finally. The years of holding it all in are over, and he’s dying a good death, one that can be useful. And if he could be nothing else, Coulson has dedicated his life to being useful. Useful to Fury, because it fulfills his sense of purpose, and useful to Clint because he can’t be anything else. He isn’t allowed to love Clint like he wants so he’s spent all these years loving Clint in the only ways left to him. Small ways, inconsequential ways, but ways that are useful. A thousand small things he could do to show the other man that he cared, hoping even when he knew it to be useless that one day Clint would see it for what it was—Coulson saying _I love you_ with each box of arrowheads, with every R &D request for a new bow, every cup of shitty coffee during stakeouts, reports completed on time and filed correctly, facing down the monster that turned Clint into an automaton, all of it was _I love you_. And Clint either didn’t see it or didn’t want to see it but the result is the same. Ten thousand times Coulson said _I love you_ and ten thousand times, Clint said nothing back.

//

“Suspended? Are you serious?” Barton paces restlessly before his desk.  
“You killed three people you weren’t authorized to kill. Tell me who they were or take the suspension.” Coulson sits back in his chair, his face carefully blank. _Hawkeye’s hit list_ , he thinks. _Not just a rumor_.  
“I didn’t like their faces.”  
“Suspension, Barton.”

//

_Clint_ , he thinks. Clint is gone, and he’ll never see him again, and he’ll never know if Clint comes back from whatever Loki’s done to him or if Clint is gone for good. He’ll never know if Clint goes to his funeral, or what he’ll say when he learns of Coulson’s death, or if he’ll even say anything at all. Clint is stoic at the best of times. He thinks of all the other things he’ll never know, too. Things like what an affectionate touch from Clint feels like, or the taste of his kiss, or what sound he makes when he comes. He knows so much about Clint—how he takes his coffee (black), his favorite book ( _The Stranger_ ), his favorite food (Vietnamese), his favorite music (he’d never admit it, but he loves Journey and isn’t being ironic), his favorite holiday (Flag Day, and he is being ironic), even how he likes to fuck (one night only, never in his own bed, gender doesn’t matter but he has a thing for bookish people). But he would never know the important stuff. What he looks like when he says _I love you_. If he would even say it, or if he would show it, instead. What he’ll look like when he gets old—if he gets old. What he will do on the day he completes his hit list. Why he even has that hit list to begin with. So many unknowns, and Coulson will never have any answers. He feels tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.

He says something to Fury. Something a good soldier would say. Something about duty and doing the right thing and motivation. He has no idea what words are coming out of his mouth because all he can hear is his own voice chanting inside him, in the place where his secrets live, where he keeps memories of a life that didn’t happen. Where he lives in a little blue house with a white fence and pictures of the love of his life decorate the mantel and there’s a closet full of discarded clothes. Where he loves and is loved in return, where Clint calls him _Phil_ and there is a pair of battered boots next to the bed. Where everything in the house is for two, not one, and there is an envelope containing instructions in case of his death on file with a private security firm. In that inside place, the place where he was happiest even if it was all pretend, he says only one thing, and it is a song and a prayer and a lamentation and absolution.

_Clint_.

//

“Jesus I fucking hate carnivals.” Barton has been twitchy ever since they stopped for lunch in a town with a festival set up at the outskirts.  
“Really? You got a problem with funnel cakes and ferris wheels?” Coulson’s words are in jest but his eyes are serious, searching.  
“Carnivals are the criminal underbelly of America.”  
“I never have trusted clowns.”

// 

Mrs. Agostino watches as stern men in dark suits come to the blue house next door. They prop open the white gate and the front door and remove box after box, loading them all into a truck. She goes to the fence and leans over a little, and for a moment, her mind is clear, and she thinks of Phil and his nice young man who is always travelling, and hopes that the young man has got a new job, one with less obligations away from home, and so they are moving. But there is something foreboding about the men and their truck that says _Security Systems_ so she doesn’t ask. She notices a dead bloom on one of her roses and bends down to break off the stem. When she looks back at the blue house, she wonders who is moving out.

Coulson’s memorial is well attended. All of SHIELD is there, most of the CIA, and a large portion of Homeland Security and the FBI show up, too. There’s a contingent of soldiers—Army Rangers—who stare blankly ahead and do not flinch during the twenty-one gun salute. The Avengers stand at the back, together, a team. Because of Coulson, and his belief in them, and what they could—can—do. Barton stands silently between Rogers and Natasha, the only one who doesn’t laugh during Stark’s tribute or get choked up during Fury’s eulogy. His gaze is turned inward, his mind busy with trying to understand why Coulson confronted Loki at all. He was a soldier and a brave man, but he was a tactician first and foremost. He would know his odds going into the fight—he would know they weren’t good.

So why did he do it?

//

“What?” Barton looks up from removing arrows from the target.  
“That was a bit much, Barton.” Coulson looks down at the dead man, a sex trafficker.  
“He deserved it, so you won’t write it up. Besides, you love me.”  
Coulson says nothing.

//

The lie is this: Phil Coulson does not love Clint Barton.


End file.
